SURPLUS MANPOWER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 200, 24 July 1937, Page 8

SURPLUS MANPOWER.

TASK FOR SOCIETY. PROFESSOR’S BELIEF. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, July 23. The world problem of surplus manpower and steps to overcome it, formed the basis of an address given by Dr. G. W. Hart. Professor of Education ill the University of California, at one of the New Education Fellowship seminars. He reached the conclusion that it was the machine that had caused the surplus and suggested that the machine would have to bear the cost of replacing men in useful employment. Organised society would have to find a new definition of useful employment. “There was a time w-hen, if a man learned a trade, he looked forward to the application of that trade for earning his livelihood throughout his life, but nowadays we may wake up tomorrow and find that our long-estab-lished means of earning a livelihood has been 6wept from under us,” said Dr. Hart. He asked his audience if they agreed that organised _ society owed no employable man a living. Several voices: “No.”

Dr. Hart: Organised society owes every employable man an opportunity to earn a living. Is that agreed? There was general assent. Dr. Hart said that the national resources an<l powers of production of tne world were such that every man, woman or child should enjoy a comfortable standard of living. Those two things being true, the only thing that remained was for them to apply their collective intelligence to bring those two things together.